Modern Buildings that changed the world: 1900-1930
1) Austrian Postal Savings Bank, Vienna (1906) Otto Wagner (1841-1918) Starting of the 20th century where Vienna was the capital of Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had left two decades before its end. On other hand Vienna was growing rapidly like never before, destroying old fortifications and creating monuments. Otto Wagner who was an accomplished architect joined the Academy of Fine Arts. During his time, he published a book entitled modern architecture. After couple of years, government changed and guess what? they decided to do remodeling of the entire city, Wagner designed bridges, canals, metro stations, hospitals etc. perhaps his best work was the Austrian Postal Savings Bank, from the aluminum maidens holding laurel wreaths aloft on the roof line to the furniture in the banking hall, Wagner articulated whole building with critical details. The Postal Savings Bank is considered one of the first monuments of modern architecture by using new materials and keeping outer wall as a load carrying structure (in that era outer walls are simply a screen). The aluminum studs imply that the marble tiles are simply pinned in place, creating the first extravagant curtain wall, banking halls has milky glass vault, for ventilation free-standing tubular ducts are provided.
2) Goldman & Salatsch Building, Vienna (1910) Adolf Loos (1870-1933) Adolf Loos was an influential European theorist of modern architecture but in history he made an impact as an enthusiastic polemicist, ready to defend his controversial work (very few buildings he actually completed) with series of public lectures. Goldman & Salatsch building located at prominent corner, just behind one of the entrance of the Hofburg Palace, the winter residence of the Austrian emperor. When the design was unveiled, its faรงade of classical architectural details were mocked. Even many commented, main elevation of the building came from a drain cover, looked like a grain elevator next to the Hofburg Palace. Loose tried to defend his design, but in the end he had to compromise and put window boxes to the faรงade.
3) Lingotto Fiat Factory, Turin (1923) Giacomo Matte Trucco Fiat’s Lingotto Factory was an extraordinary summation of the factory architecture of its time, linear design and topped by a rooftop test track with spiral concrete access ramps at either end (which captured imagination of Le Corbusier). It looked like futuristic at that moment but it was a great deal to Italy’s capitalist economy. By learning from Ford’s Detroit, the Agnelli family created one of the Europe’s great businesses. No cars have been made at Lingotto for 40 years. Now it has been converted into a hotel, shop and office complex. Roof top being used as art gallery that houses Gianni Agnelli’s art collection.
4) Bauhaus, Dessau (1925-26) Walter Gropius (1883-1869) Bauhaus was a German art school which was famous for its approach to design that it published and taught. It occupied many buildings, an existing art school in Weimar, redundant factory in Berlin but school’s lasting fame comes from the Dessau building that Walter Gropius designed in 1925 and inaugurated in 1926. Dessau is a small town near Berlin had an ambitious mayor who was so eager to attract Bauhaus that he was ready to pay for a new building containing studios, workshops, theatre, canteen, and dormitories on a site on the edge of the town. In addition to school, on a second site there were houses for the ‘Masters’ – one accommodated by Gropius himself; Wassily Kandinsky had another. The scale of its all glass studio walls, the dynamic pinwheel plan, cantilevered balconies defined the period of modernism. Also placing a studio on a bridge between two blocks was a bold move. Gropius’s reputation today is greater as an educator than an architect for his most accomplished building Bauhaus in Dessau. 5) German Pavilion, Barcelona (1929) Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) National pavilions at World Fairs are rarely intended to become permanent buildings. Barcelona International Exposition of 1929 was no exception. Even though it was summary of everything that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe believed in, contained within just thousand square meters, dismantled when the fair closed. The exquisite pavilion merely became a faded memory, with some photographs of Mies in his silk top hat at the opening ceremony. Mies even designed the Barcelona chair, the piece of furniture specifically designed for the pavilion. At the opening ceremony, the King and Queen of
Spain used the chairs as thrones. The pavilion has series of exhibition halls showcasing German industrial production, designed by Mies’s lover Lily. Pavilion itself nothing but pool of utter architecture, travertine floors and marble walls, two rows of chrome-plated, cruciform steel columns, green glass and a reflecting pool, with a single figure sculpted by Georg Kolbe. Later on in 1980s, Cristian Cirici was commissioned to reconstruct the pavilion on its original site on the edge of Montjuic Park.